CJ makes shocking departure; three conferred with ORTT

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

When Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced her Gov­ern­ment’s stance on the Unit­ed States as­sault on nar­co-traf­fick­ers at the start of Sep­tem­ber, she sent shock­waves lo­cal­ly and around the re­gion.

“I have no sym­pa­thy for traf­fick­ers, the US mil­i­tary should kill them all vi­o­lent­ly,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, as she re­spond­ed to the US con­firm­ing that its mil­i­tary had con­duct­ed a lethal strike on a sus­pect­ed nar­co-traf­fick­ing ves­sel al­leged­ly em­a­nat­ing from Venezuela.

Stat­ing that drug and arms traf­fick­ing had caused death and de­struc­tion in lo­cal so­ci­ety over the past 25 years, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: “I, along with most of the coun­try, am hap­py that the US naval de­ploy­ment is hav­ing suc­cess in their mis­sion. The US gov­ern­ment has re­peat­ed­ly said that go­ing af­ter the drug car­tels was their ob­jec­tive and they have be­gun to de­liv­er.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s firm stance on the is­sue was un­wa­ver­ing de­spite some crit­i­cism over the le­gal­i­ty of the US’s ac­tions.

De­scrib­ing her com­ments as reck­less, dis­grace­ful and in­con­sis­tent with her oath of of­fice, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said: “It is com­plete­ly un­be­com­ing of our head of gov­ern­ment, who is ex­pect­ed to be more pru­dent in her lan­guage.”

Un­fazed by the crit­i­cism, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­it­er­at­ed the stance on the glob­al stage on Sep­tem­ber 27, as she de­liv­ered her first ad­dress to fel­low world lead­ers at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) since se­cur­ing her sec­ond term in of­fice on April 28.

Her ad­dress came af­ter sev­er­al Cari­com col­leagues utilised their time to call on the US to ease its mil­i­tary ac­tion seem­ing­ly di­rect­ed at Venezuela and main­tain the Caribbean as “a zone of peace.”

When her turn at the lectern came, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had come with a “hard truth.”

“The no­tion that the Caribbean is a zone of peace has be­come a false ide­al. The re­al­i­ty is stark—no such peace ex­ists to­day. For too many in our re­gion, peace is not dai­ly life, but an elu­sive promise glimpsed, and nev­er grasped. In its ab­sence, our cit­i­zens pay a ter­ri­ble toll,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“While there have been ob­jec­tions to the US mil­i­tary ac­tion against drug car­tels from some coun­tries, T&T re­minds the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that, un­less force­ful and ag­gres­sive ac­tions are tak­en, these evil drug car­tels will con­tin­ue their so­ci­etal de­struc­tion be­cause they be­lieve af­fect­ed na­tions will al­ways un­re­served­ly sub­scribe to morals and ethics which they them­selves bla­tant­ly flout,” she said.

The tough stance on crim­i­nal­i­ty, tak­en by Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Gov­ern­ment, was not lim­it­ed to ac­tiv­i­ty in and around the coun­try’s mar­itime bor­ders.

As the new school term opened in Sep­tem­ber, plans were re­vealed for po­lice of­fi­cers to be sta­tioned at 50 high-risk sec­ondary schools to as­sist in cur­tail­ing a sig­nif­i­cant up­surge in school vi­o­lence.

At the time, there was some un­cer­tain­ty over whether the of­fi­cers, who are part of a new­ly formed unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), would be armed with firearms.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar even­tu­al­ly dis­missed any con­cerns raised over the abil­i­ty of the of­fi­cers to car­ry ser­vice firearms while on du­ty at schools.

“No mat­ter what some com­men­ta­tors say, the law re­mains the law and TTPS of­fi­cers are free to car­ry their firearms in­side or out­side of schools if it is deemed nec­es­sary. Po­lice of­fi­cers re­port to their TTPS se­niors and not the school prin­ci­pals,” she said.

She main­tained that the mea­sure was in­tend­ed to curb bul­ly­ing and class­room vi­o­lence by pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion to vul­ner­a­ble stake­hold­ers in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

“Too many stu­dents are bul­lied, robbed and beat­en at schools. To some chil­dren, it is a ter­ror to at­tend school. We have chil­dren fail­ing be­cause they are too afraid to at­tend school, as they are bul­lied every day. It’s a dai­ly tor­ture for them,” she said.

“I promised that we would purge our schools of this de­struc­tive be­hav­iour by every le­gal means avail­able. The peo­ple of this coun­try have had enough—enough of school brawls, enough of wicked­ness in our class­rooms, enough of fear in our com­mu­ni­ties,” she added.

On Sep­tem­ber 5, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) for Op­er­a­tions Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who is the point per­son for the project, warned that of­fi­cers found en­gag­ing in in­ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct with stu­dents un­der their purview will face the full brunt of the law.

Stat­ing he had is­sued the warn­ing to 95 Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers af­ter they com­plet­ed a school-ori­ent­ed polic­ing course at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James, Ben­jamin said: “I made it very clear that we are go­ing to con­duct our­selves pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

“We have to start with our of­fi­cers and let them un­der­stand the se­ri­ous­ness that they are en­ter­ing in­to. This is not for games, we are there for a job with­out fear and favour, mal­ice or ill will and we are go­ing to do it with a lev­el of pride, pro­fes­sion­al­ism, re­spect, in­tegri­ty, dig­ni­ty, and ex­cel­lence.”

While stu­dents across T&T re­ceived added pro­tec­tion in their schools, such ac­tiv­i­ty was in­suf­fi­cient to pro­tect one girl from vi­o­lent crime while at home.

On Sep­tem­ber 20, a qui­et vil­lage in Ste Madeleine was plunged in­to mourn­ing af­ter the body of 12-year-old res­i­dent Mari­ah Seenath was found in a track near a recre­ation ground.

The stu­dent of San Fer­nan­do East Sec­ondary School had left her fa­ther’s home to go to her grand­moth­er’s house, lo­cat­ed a short dis­tance away, when she went miss­ing.

Seenath had bruis­es about her body and an au­top­sy re­vealed that she died of blunt force trau­ma to her head.

No one was ar­rest­ed and charged in con­nec­tion with Seenath’s heinous killing.

The le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty was rocked by the news that long-serv­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie was set to re­tire af­ter serv­ing over 17 years at the helm of the Ju­di­cia­ry.

Archie chose to de­liv­er his bomb­shell an­nounce­ment in his an­nu­al ad­dress at the open­ing of the 2025/2026 Law Term on Sep­tem­ber 16.

Archie said: “I have de­cid­ed to re­tire, not re­sign, at a time of my own choos­ing and not to wait un­til I reach the age of 70. There will al­ways be un­fin­ished busi­ness no mat­ter when I leave but I have de­cid­ed to re­tire dur­ing this term, so this will be my last speech.”

While Archie did not re­veal the ex­act date that he would demit of­fice, he not­ed that he would not be around when the oc­ca­sion is cel­e­brat­ed once again, next year.

“The of­fice of Chief Jus­tice is not pri­vate prop­er­ty or some­thing you own or cling to; it is a sa­cred ba­ton held in trust for one’s suc­ces­sors and the na­tion. I am but a sin­gle run­ner in a nev­er-end­ing re­lay and the ba­ton must be passed at some time,” Archie said.

Re­flect­ing on his al­most two-decade stint as Chief Jus­tice, Archie said that he was pleased that he was able to help im­prove the Ju­di­cia­ry by mod­ernising it by in­tro­duc­ing tech­nol­o­gy and im­prov­ing its ef­fi­cien­cy through nu­mer­ous pro­ce­dur­al re­forms.

“This is not an ex­haus­tive list, and it is no small achieve­ment in the con­text of a sys­tem of pub­lic sec­tor gov­er­nance and man­age­ment that is se­ri­ous­ly dys­func­tion­al. I am sat­is­fied that we are in a much bet­ter place than we were in 2008,” he said.

His re­tire­ment came soon­er than ex­pect­ed the fol­low­ing month.

The news was met with mixed feel­ings from stake­hold­ers but was wel­comed by Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, who had re­peat­ed­ly called on Archie to re­sign over the past sev­en years, es­pe­cial­ly for his con­duct in pres­sur­ing for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar to re­sign over pub­lic furore over the cas­es she left un­fin­ished when she took up a pro­mo­tion as a High Court Judge.

“Good rid­dance. Go your way,” Khan, who was crit­i­cised by con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty for sym­bol­i­cal­ly de­stroy­ing a por­trait of Archie that pre­vi­ous­ly adorned a wall of his of­fice along­side those of oth­er post-In­de­pen­dence chief jus­tices, said.

On Re­pub­lic Day, the coun­try’s high­est na­tion­al award, the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of T&T (ORTT), was con­ferred on two uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors and a To­bag­on­ian politi­cian.

Pro­fes­sors Sel­wyn Cud­joe and Ken­neth Ram­c­hand were present to re­ceive the award from Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, while for­mer To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) chief sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles was award­ed posthu­mous­ly.

Cud­joe dis­missed any crit­i­cism of him re­ceiv­ing the award based on his sup­port of Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) dur­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign.

Cud­joe, who taught at the pres­ti­gious Har­vard and Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ties in the US, said: “They can­not take away from what I have done over 80 years. They could say non­sense, which it ac­tu­al­ly is, but it must give them one con­crete rea­son why they say it. So, I don’t both­er with them, they’re not im­por­tant in my life. My work con­tin­ues re­gard­less of where I am. So, I’m not con­cerned about the de­trac­tors.”